I regret to say I was still abed when Rebecca called me on Thursday morning.
‘I need you and Tim, plus a lot of gowns and gloves and so on. We’re going into the flat above the charity shop.’
‘I thought you’d eliminated that.’
‘Anything but. Can you meet me at the hospital in an hour?’
‘Don’t you need a warrant?’
‘On its way.’
I phoned Tim and told him to get all the stuff ready, then showered, swallowed some cereal and coffee, and left.
Tim was waiting for me with cases of gowns and gloves and a Red Bag. I told him what was happening as we took it all to my car.
Rebecca arrived ten minutes later. There were two men with her she introduced as Greg and Phil. ‘Can you follow us to the shop?’ she said.
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘Are they coming inside with us?’
‘Greg is – he’s been vaccinated. Phil’ll wait outside as back up.’
We followed her through the city and parked in the space behind the shop. Rebecca went inside, returning a few moments later with two worried looking middle-aged ladies. They locked the shop and drove off.
We gowned up, then climbed the iron stairway. Tim carried the Red Bag.
Rebecca waited until we were all on the platform at the top, then pushed the bell. I thought I heard a baby cry.
There was no answer, so she pressed it again, a long, continuous ring.
Still no answer.
She tried the door. It opened. We could hear the baby crying quite clearly now. Rebecca made a signal to Phil below, then went inside.
‘Police,’ she called, ‘anyone at home?’
No answer, except for the crying.
She went further in. We followed her down a narrow passageway to a dark and dingy little hall. An open door led to a kitchen behind us, another into a bathroom. No one in either. She went on, stopped at a door on the left, a bedroom. There was a double bed on one side and a cot on the other. The baby in the cot had struggled to its knees and was clinging to the bars, its mouth a large O as it screamed its displeasure. Its nappy was bulging and the stench made your eyes water.
Rebecca said, ‘Greg, check the living room –’
She went over to the baby, but didn’t touch it. ‘Poor little mite… How could they leave you like –’
‘Boss!’ Greg’s voice, urgent – ‘You’d better come…’
We followed his voice into a large living room. It was dim because the curtains were drawn. Greg was kneeling by the sofa. On it were two figures, a male and a female, one draped over an arm, the other half lying on the seat.
Rebecca went over – ‘Oh my God…’ she breathed…
Two others lay slumped in armchairs. Both male. All four were dead.
I ask myself now how I knew that. They were unmarked so far as I could see and could have been asleep, but I knew that they were dead.
She said, ‘Pull the curtains, will you?’
Greg did so. ‘D’you know them, boss?’
She nodded. She was like marble. I could see that, despite the mask.
‘That’s Will and Emma, the parents –’ she indicated the sofa ‘–that’s Malcolm North… and that’s Craig Holland. They’re all BTA members.’
Craig
! The one she’d been with the night before last…
I went over to her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No. It’s OK, I’ll survive. Get an ambulance for the baby, would you?’
I took out my phone and keyed 999. Called for an ambulance, stressing that the patient was a baby, probably dehydrated, who had to go straight into isolation.
‘What a mess…’ Rebecca said.
‘Boss, look at this…’ Greg, over by a computer we hadn’t noticed before.
Dreamlike, we went over. There was a message on the screen:
WE COULDN’T GO THRU WITH IT. PLEASE LOOK AFTER MY BABY…
Then Tim, who hadn’t said anything up until now, called me back to where he was kneeling beside a coffee table.
‘Smell that,’ he said, pointing to a champagne flute on its side, still with some liquor in it.
I knelt beside him and cautiously sniffed. Almonds. We looked at each other, then I got up and examined the faces of the couple on the sofa more closely…
She was more a girl than a woman and looked very peaceful, but her face was bright pink. I looked at the others, then called Rebecca over.
‘I think this is cyanide poisoning,’ I said, and told her about the smell and pink complexions, both characteristic, then pointed to the champagne bottle on the sideboard. ‘I’ll bet that contains Potassium Cyanide.’
‘Where would they get that?’
‘A lot of labs used to use it for differentiating types of bacteria.’ I turned to Tim. ‘We haven’t got any, have we?’
He shook his head. ‘Not since before I came.’
‘It looks like a suicide pact,’ I said
She was shaking her head. ‘I find that very hard to believe...’
‘Why –?’ I began, but was cut off by the sound of the ambulance siren.
‘Could you see to the baby?’ she said.
I nodded and went back outside to the platform. Started down the steps as the ambulance turned into the space.
I explained what had happened – some of it – told them they’d have to be vaccinated and then got them gowned up. We went in.
‘Poor little bugger,’ one of them said, as the other picked him up. Just feel of the man’s arms around seemed to calm him. Liquid dripped from the swollen nappy as they carried him out.
I went back to the living room. They were all outside the door and Greg was sealing it with yellow tape. Rebecca was on the phone.
She finished the call. ‘Scene of Crime’s on the way,’ she said. ‘They know what to expect. We’d better do what we came to do.’
She led the way back to the bedroom and pointed to the door in the wall at the far side. ‘I think that might be our laboratory.’
I hadn’t noticed it before. I made sure my mask was on properly, then went over and tried the handle. It was locked.
‘Let me,’ said Greg.
He knelt in front of it and examined the lock for a few moments before producing a bunch of keys. Selected one and tried it. Then another. The third one worked.
‘All yours, doc,’ he said, standing up.
I opened the door, just a crack at first, then cautiously as far as it would go. Put my head round, found a light switch.
The room was about six feet by fourteen. A bench ran along the far side. On it were items of equipment.
I beckoned Tim and we went in.
‘I wonder where they got this,’ he said.
This
was a microscope, upright, black and ancient.
‘And this…’ An elderly centrifuge. ‘Perfectly serviceable, though.’
There was a Bunsen burner, the tube running through a hole to a cylinder underneath; a large plastic container filled with liquid, presumably distilled water; an old, oven sized incubator; a ‘fridge; reagent bottles and also underneath, a freezer. A cable from a multipoint board ran through the wainscoting to the bedroom.
‘Must have been fun getting that incubator up the steps,’ he mused.
‘Anything in it?’ I asked.
He pulled the chrome handle and the heavy door swung open. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘It’s up to temperature though, so presumably, there was.’
‘What about the freezer?’
He went down on his knees and opened it. The layer of ice inside suggested it hadn’t been defrosted in perhaps a month.
‘A rack of what looks like cell cultures,’ he said.
‘Nothing buried in the ice?’
He prodded around a bit. ‘Not that I can see.’
I opened the ‘fridge. ‘Nothing here, either.’
He got to his feet and took another look round. ‘No hood,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised they risked working without one.’
‘The Health and Safety Officer speaks,’ I said. ‘These were idealists.’
‘But what about the baby?’ he said, looking at me. ‘A mother, exposing her baby to
this
…’
‘We don’t strictly know what
this
is yet,’ I said. ‘More to the point, what are we going to do with it?’
‘Bomb it out,’ he said. ‘Just as soon as I’ve got the samples I need.’
He meant boiling a vessel of formaldehyde in it until the vapour had penetrated every crack. ‘That goes for the whole flat,’ he added.
Rebecca, whom I’d forgotten for the moment, called out, ‘What have you found?’
I left Tim to bag up the cell cultures and take whatever other samples he wanted, went out and told her. ‘One thing, though,’ I said, ‘I don’t think they built that room. It looks to me as though it’s been there some time.’
She nodded. ‘Probably some sort of junk room. They found it and realised what it could be used for.’ She looked at me. ‘SOC’ll be here soon – can we let them examine the bodies?’
‘I think so. I’ll get them immunised after they’ve finished.’
‘You’re satisfied that’s it, then?’ She nodded towards the hidden lab.
I nodded. ‘Strictly speaking, I suppose we should wait till we’ve looked at the cell cultures we’re taking, but I don’t know what else it could be.’ I told her how we were going to bomb it out as soon as Tim had finished.
‘You’ve got the stuff here to do that?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘I’ll have to go back to the hospital for it. Needs to be done ASAP, though.’ I looked round. ‘The rest of the flat too, as soon as Scene Of Crimes has finished.’
Rebecca’s mobile went – Phil, telling her SOC had arrived. We went out to the hall, and while she phoned Brigg to tell him what had happened, I went out onto the platform, de-gowned and stuffed everything into an incinerator bag. I then went down and explained the situation to SOC, glad we’d brought enough gowns. They’d used them before. I told them they’d have to be immunised later today, then asked them to tell Tim I’d gone to fetch the bombing equipment.
As I drove back, ignoble thoughts ran through my mind about Rebecca and Craig... She’d been shocked sideways finding him there, though she’d recovered quickly enough. Or was that just professionalism?
I supposed that that kind of thing went with her job. I remembered the story in the papers about the undercover cop who’d infiltrated an environmental group and had affairs with several of the women before eventually ‘crossing over’ to them.
Had she ever been tempted to do that, I wondered? Although that presupposed she’d been doing this kind of work for a while…
I realised my thoughts were bordering on the prurient and thrust them away.
At the hospital, I found the equipment quickly enough, loaded it and went back. Tim had finished and was waiting for me.
We unplugged the lab’s electrics, opened the doors of the fridge, freezer and incubator, then Tim connected up the boiler and glugged a Winchester bottle of formaldehyde into it. He came out, coughing, then quickly shut the door and began sealing it with tape.
‘I’ll never get used to that stuff so long as I live,’ he said.
‘Nor me. What about this?’ I indicated the hole the cable ran through.
He sealed that too, then switched on.
‘How long does it need to boil?’ I asked.
‘Half an hour’ll do it. Add twenty minutes to get it to the boil, say an hour altogether to be on the safe side.’ He glanced at his watch.
‘You get the samples back,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay and do the rest of the place. Two vessels, hour and a half boiling?’
He nodded. ‘That’ll do it. I’ll have the EM result on those cultures in a couple of hours. PCR’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’ He meant electron microscopy and polymerase chain reaction, the latter being the definitive test for the virus.
‘I’ll get the cultures of the swabs up as well,’ he said.
‘I hope to God they’re negative,’ I said.
He’d taken swabs from around the lab and bedroom; if the virus was on any of those, it increased the risk it might have escaped from the flat.
I gave him the keys to my car and he left.
I went to find Rebecca. She was by the living room door, watching the SOC team as they photographed, measured, took samples from around the bodies.
‘How long d’you think they’ll be?’ I asked.
‘Should be done in a couple of hours.’
‘I’d like to get the rest of the flat bombed out tonight,’ I said.
‘Will we be able to get in afterwards?’
‘Not for a day or two at least, and even then, it won’t be pleasant. Were you surprised by who it was?’ I asked, indicating the bodies.
‘By Emma and Will, no, since they’d have to have known,’ she said. ‘The other two, yes. I thought the Chair’s wife, Hannah, far more likely. In fact, I still do.’ She continued slowly, ‘In fact, I’m not convinced by this convenient little scenario.’
I asked what she meant.
‘I find it hard to believe in their sudden and unanimous remorse,’ she said. ‘Even harder to believe in their mass suicide, and impossible to believe a mother would leave her baby in that state while she did so.’